Dragons of the East
by The Cyan Knight
Summary: Tenten tries to hide a horrifying secret that has something to do with her past from Neji, her sparring partner. But what excuse can she make for leaving in the middle of their sparring matches due to this secret? NejiTen
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Naruto.

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**Prologue**

It was raining in Konoha. Fat water droplets dripped down, splattering like blood. Tenten dawdled in the rain by herself. After sparring with Neji, she was covered in sweat and since it **was** showering, why not let nature cleanse her for free?

She walked, slowly but steadily, toward her home. Although she lived alone and was an orphan, the money she made from missions with her team was enough for her to buy a decent enough house, which was one with a bathroom, a bedroom, and a kitchen.

Tenten approached the front of her house, number 62. Taking her bronze-colored keys out, she unlocked the door and stepped inside. The rooms contained little furniture, but she **did** have a whole wall dedicated to weapons. After all, she wasn't the Weapons Mistress of Konoha for nothing.

'_Hmm…I need to change out of my wet clothes. Otherwise, I'd get sick.'_ Since her clothing was upstairs, Tenten made her way to the stairs. Somehow, her body felt a lot heavier than usual when she climbed the stairs. She put one foot higher than the other, tiredly lifting herself up. When she got onto the 9th step, though, the unusual amount of heaviness pulled her down and so she fell.

Something was wrong. She couldn't even make a proper landing due to the weight! Instead she landed on her butt, except that instead of bouncing a bit, her body came down with a crunch.

Swiveling her head to look behind her, Tenten saw a mass of black, leathery black. She twitched and the blackness moved. '_No! This is me?!'_ Attempting to stand, she found it so difficult that only after many tries did she manage to stagger up. Stumbling around, she managed to get herself in front of a mirror. What she saw scared her. She had become an obsidian-scaled dragon.

**O.o.o.O.o.o.O**

Bandaging the cuts he'd gotten from Tenten, Neji could have sworn that he had heard a voice like Tenten's scream.

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A/N: Like it? Hate it? Review, please. 


	2. Chapter 1: Flimsy Excuses

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto.

**Chapter 1: Flimsy Excuses**

'_Shoot_', Neji realized, '_That **was** Tenten._' And with that thought in mind, he set off toward Tenten's home.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Meanwhile, at her house, Tenten was starting to panic. '_Am I cursed? Like Gaara? Will I be feared and hated by everyone because of this? Why can't I change back to a human?_'

"Come on!" she muttered to herself as she willed herself to change. No. Nothing happened. She still had the same piercing golden eyes, the same black-scaled long body, and the same large leathery bat-like wings.

A knock was heard.

'_No! I can't let anyone find out what happened!'_

"Tenten? Are you alright?" questioned a concerned voice. Neji's voice.

'_I have to hurry…I need to think of an excuse! But wait… Was that truly Neji, though? He never comes to my house except to ask to spar.'_

"Tenten?" asked Neji's voice again.

'_All right. Perhaps it really is him. I hope he hasn't used his Byakugan yet._' She silently prayed for her excuse (albeit a very lame one) to work.

"Neji, don't come in. I'm changing!" shouted Tenten.

"Really…Is that so? Then what was the reason for that scream I heard earlier?" drawled Neji. Tenten could almost see his smirk.

"Um…I was in the shower! You know, and it was really warm…but suddenly it got hot! Really hot…so I screamed," replied Tenten nervously, wishing fervently that he wouldn't see through her incredibly horrible lie.

"Hn." He lingered around her house for a couple minutes longer, then left.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Tenten listened intently with her new sharper dragon ears to hear Neji leave.

She sighed. She could tell that Neji wasn't entirely convinced about the whole hot shower thing. He was far too intelligent to fall for such an excuse. Now, though, she had other things to think about.

'_Now, how can I change back into a human? Hmm…'_

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Neji strode silently away from Tenten's house.

'_At least now I know she's okay. But what exactly **did** happen to her? Why is she keeping secrets from me?'

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A/N: Do they actually know about Gaara's hidden monster? I don't remember, having read the chapters a long time ago. Yeah…so I'm trying to make these chapters longer…Too much dialogue? Please review.


	3. Chapter 2: Enter Team Gai!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto. Geez…how many times do I have to repeat myself to get this through your thick heads? Just kidding…

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**Chapter 2: Enter Team Gai**

The next day, Tenten awoke from her sleep to find that she had her own human body again.

_'Heh. Guess that it was just a dream. Nothing to worry about.'_

Smiling with relief, she stretched out her limbs and then proceeded to gather her weapons for today's spar. As she did, she wondered, _'Could there be a slight possibility that it was real?' Nah. Those events that happened yesterday were probably figments of her imagination.'_

Humming a cheery tune, she strolled calmly out of her house to the training grounds.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

"You're late," stated an irritated Neji, when she arrived. Taken aback, Tenten glanced at her watch. It read 9:56 am, not 9:00, which was the time she and her teammates had agreed upon to be there to practice every day.

Her other teammate, Lee, also reprimanded her for being tardy, but in a **different** way.

"YOSH! TENTEN, YOU SHOULDN'T LOSE THE FLAMES OF YOUTH SO EARLY IN YOUR YOUTH BY BEING LATE!!!!!!!"

And in addition to Lee's shouts were also Gai's.

"TARDINESS IS NOT A YOUTHFUL THING, TENTEN!" exclaimed Gai.

"Sorry, Gai-sensei," Tenten replied back, almost automatically.

"ALL RIGHT! NOW WE SHALL BEGIN OUR YOUTHFUL TRAINING!!!" yelled Gai with a brilliant flash of teeth, almost instantly forgetting her lateness. Instinctively, she stepped near Neji. She absolutely did not want a repeat of the first and last time she had sparred with Lee, when she had become deaf for two weeks because of his loud voice. Neji, who had sparred with Gai that time, had also become slightly deaf from the words of encouragement the Gai gave him (while the fight was in progress). Thus the two, decided that, in order to minimize hearing loss, they would train with each other and leaver Gai and Lee to do their shouting with each other.

Walking off to one of the practice fields, she and Neji took their starting positions and began.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Tenten started out by going on the offensive, using Soushryouu to attack. As rain after rain of weapons hurtled toward him, she saw him spinning, performing Kaiten to block her onslaught of sharpened objects.

_'Good. I'll do this until he's tired so I can win against him using my new technique. He doesn't know I have a new technique, so I can surprise him.'_

She pulled back her weapons using her chakra strings and once more, threw the weapons at him hoping to weaken him enough so that he wouldn't be able to use his Kaiten.

He saw the attack, as she knew he would, and spun again.

'_Good. He must be getting tired.'_ She grinned. Unusually, though, her back began feeling heavy again, almost pulling her down. '_Strange.'_ She had just begun the fight; she shouldn't be feeling this tired yet. Twisting her head around to look, she almost knew what was going to be **there**. Looking back, she saw the tell-tale black bumps slowly erupting out of her clothing.

'_Shoot. How do I get out of this?'_ Neji was already preparing to use Jyuuken on her. Tenten cleared her throat and quickly mumbled a feeble excuse to escape from the fight.

"Er…um…Neji…sorry…but I really need to go home right now. I feel a bit sick." With that said, she turned and made a mad dash to her home all the while feeling the dragon wings grow upon her back.

In the safety of her room, she pinched herself to make sure it was not a dream. Feeling pain, Tenten realized that it was real. Yesterday's events truly had happened. And she was indeed a monster.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Neji watched Tenten's back disappear into the streets of Konoha. Her behavior recently had been strange. She had no reason to lie to him; therefore, she must be guarding secrets from him. He knew that Tenten was not the type to continuously hide what she thought, so this was probably very important, important enough to affect Team Gai's teamwork.

Also, were her shoulder blades actually growing, or was that just a sign that his blessed eyesight was beginning to fail him?

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A/N: Sorry I didn't update for so long…I had 3 weeks of camp…And then I had homework to finish for school…and also I didn't exactly know the spellings of the attacks…This is my first time writing an actual battle scene, so could someone tell me how it was??? Thanks. 


	4. Chapter 3: Hooded Stranger

**Disclaimer: **No…Naruto does not belong to me…

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**Chapter 3: Hooded Stranger**

Tenten looked at herself, again…She was transforming, exactly the same as last time. Her fingers darkened, and shaped themselves into claws. The dragon wings, she could feel, hung heavily on her back.

_'I couldn't control when this happens,'_ she realized, _'Maybe Tsunade-sama knows how to change my problem. No…that wouldn't work…She'd probably think I was simply trying to fool her.'_

While Tenten took her time to contemplate on whether to tell Tsunade-sama about her "affliction", a brown-haired hooded stranger strode into Konoha.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

As he strolled down the streets of Konoha, Neji wondered why his teammate, Tenten, was acting so weirdly lately. First, it was the incredibly pathetic 'hot shower' lie, now she was running away from sparring.

He suddenly came to a conclusion.

_'She's avoiding me, isn't she? What did I ever do to offend her?'_

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Eventually, Tenten decided not to go to Tsunade.

_'Perhaps Tsunade-sama would be repelled by my monstrosity. After all, she does constantly put up a genjutsu to make her seem 30 years old. No…I probably shouldn't go.'_

She heard a light knock on her door. It wasn't Neji, though; his knocks were different, quieter. And it most certainly wasn't Lee or Gai; they weren't that careful with their strength and so more often than not, their knocks ended up as the door crashing down. Therefore, this someone must be someone she did not know so well.

"Who is it?" she asked, curious. Almost no one, apart from her team, ever came to visit her.

There was complete and utter silence. Annoyed, Tenten marched straight to the door and unlocked it.

When the door completely opened, she came face-to-face with a hooded stranger.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Tenten stared at the person. The person, undaunted, stared back.

"Here," stated the brown-haired stranger, "Wear it." An object was thrown at her. Being a weapons specialist as she was, she caught it deftly (and quickly) with a flick of her hand. Yet, by the time she took to catch the object, the mysterious person had vanished.

Peering more closely at it, Tenten saw that it was a ring. Almost unconsciously, she slipped the silver band on her finger.

She stared at it for a while, as if in a trance.

Then, she paused.

_'Wait a moment. What if the stranger had cast some strange jutsu on it?'_ she thought. Thinking that, Tenten attempted to slip the ring off, but for some reason, it wouldn't budge.

_'Shoot,'_ she cursed herself inside her mind, _'There was a jutsu on it…'_ And as if on cue, Tenten fell backwards and slumped unnaturally into sleep.

Being as preoccupied as she was with the strange inability to take the ring off, Tenten failed to notice that she had changed back into a human, light-weighted and all.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

The next morning, as soon as dawn arrived, Tenten immediately awoke to find herself on the floor. She stumbled into her room and changed into a new outfit. Falling into routine, she skipped breakfast and went to the practice fields to train.

Neji had already arrived there. Now, they merely had to wait for Lee and Gai.

O.o.o.O.o.o.O

Neji stared. No, it wasn't because he was obsessed with Tenten's fingers…It was rather due to the fact that the light kept on bouncing off of that metal ring.

_'Where did she get that ring? Is she engaged?'_ As he thought this, his mouth automatically began to frown.

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A/N: Is there enough Neji x Tenten in this? Or is this simply becoming a fanfic that simply has Neji and Tenten in it as characters? Please review… And yeah…sorry I haven't updated for a long time…High school kills. 


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